It Was An Aces Kind Of Day At U.S. Tennis Open

BY ESPN

If this is how Serena Williams serves when she can't practice properly because her right shoulder is sore, watch out when she's 100 percent healthy.

A year after falling two wins short of a calendar-year Grand Slam by bowing out in the US Open semifinals, Williams showed zero signs of shoulder trouble on Tuesday night as she began her bid for a record-breaking 23rd major title.

She hit 12 aces and reached 121 mph on her powerful serve during a 6-3, 6-3 victory over Ekaterina Makarova, a potentially tricky first-round opponent at Flushing Meadows.

"I was pleased with my serve, because I haven't been hitting a lot of serves at all,'' the 34-year-old Williams said. "In practice, none of them were going in, so I was definitely excited about that."

Since equaling Steffi Graf's mark for most Grand Slam singles trophies in the Open era, which dates to 1968, by earning No. 22 at Wimbledon in July, the No. 1-ranked Williams had entered only one event -- the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, where she was upset in the third round. She cited a sore shoulder in withdrawing from a hard-court tournament a week later.

She looked perfectly fine against Makarova, a two-time Grand Slam semifinalist who is ranked 29th. Makarova beat Williams in straight sets at the 2012 Australian Open.

"I knew today I needed to be focused, because I've played her," Williams said of Makarova. "She's gotten to the semifinals. She goes deep in majors. She knows how to play big matches on big courts. She's not intimidated. I knew I had to really come out today. It was my only option, really."

Ivo Karlovic Sets Ace Mark

Perhaps the greatest server of all time, Ivo Karlovic set a new mark Tuesday.

The 21st-seeded Croatian swatted a US Open-record 61 aces in a 4-6, 7-6 (4), 6-7 (4), 7-6 (5), 7-5 win over Yen-Hsun Lu of Taiwan to reach the second round of the season's final major.

Karlovic's total smashed the previous record held by Richard Krajicek, who in 1999 hit 49 aces against Yevgeny Kafelnikov.

After the match, Karlovic said he wasn't aware that he was in the process of setting a record.

"I [just] knew there was a lot of aces," Karlovic said. "I was, like, hitting them easy. At one point, almost every serve was an ace."

He was talking specifically about the second set, in which he hit an astonishing 22 aces in 35 strokes.

Not surprisingly, Karlovic won more than 90 percent of his first-serve points and was broken only once. Karlovic equaled his ace total by hitting 61 winners. Just as impressively, he committed only 10 unforced errors in the 3-hour, 46-minute match. Karlovic's performance increased his all-time ace total to 11,277, the most in ATP history and 1,146 more than second-place Goran Ivanisevic.

Like the Williams sisters, Karlovic has defied time. At 37, he is the second-oldest player in this year's US Open draw, behind the Czech Republic's Radek Stepanek, who is three months older.